SQL Server - NVARCHAR needed for European Languages?

Question

We are doing an installation of our web-based application (.NET against SQL Server 2008) in Germany. We are in the midst of internationalizing the application and database. I realize that some languages (e.g. in India or China) require extended character sets. These extended character sets require data types of NVARCHAR (instead of VARCHAR) in SQL Server.

Due to an already aggressive timeline, I'd like to make the transition from VARCHAR to NVARCHAR in a later release. I have researched but could not find a definitive answer to this question:

Will SQL Server's VARCHAR datatype fully support the German language?

Answer 1

The default encoding for CHAR is iso_1, which is actually ISO 8859-1. The Wikipedia page for this standard states that German is fully covered--however other European languages are not.

So if you only care about German for now, you might be OK. But really, you should migrate to NVARCHAR as soon as possible!